Acid Mothers Temple
May 18th, 2023
Johnny Brenda's
Philadelphia, PA


Source: Tascam DR-40X (A/B config) > Smorgasboard of EQ and compression/limiting

SOUND QUALITY: B (recorded from back-of-house, with boomy bass and extra room resonance. After an unfair amount of EQ I think the sound is listenable, but by no means was it a pretty voyage)

SMORGASBOARD OF PLUGINS: Shadow Hills Class A Mastering Compressor, AMEK EQ 200, bx_subsynth, TDR/VOS SlickEQ GE, Lindell 50, TDR Nova GE. Many, many, many more were called, but only these six ended up getting up.

THE BAND:
Kawabata Makoto : guitar, speed guru
Higashi Hiroshi : synthesizer, fishin’god
Jyonson Tsu : voice, guitar, bouzouki, midnight whislter
Satoshima Nani : drums, another dimension

SPECIAL TOURING MEMBER:
Ron Anderson : bass, pak molecules

IN THE BAND, NOT ON THE TOUR:
Sawano Shozo : bass, hex man

NO LONGER WITH THE BAND BUT WE WON'T FORGET THEM:
Shimura Koji : drums, latino cool
Tsuyama Atsushi : monster bass, voice, cosmic joker
Tabata Mitasuru : guitar, guitar-synthesizer, maratab
S/T : bass, space & time

TRACK LIST:
00. Soundcheck/Intro/More Volume in Jyonson's Monitor, Please [2:41]
01. Blue Velvet Blues [13:25]
02. Dark Star Blues [12:31]
03. Flying Teapot [18:02]
04. Feedback > [0:47]
05. From Planet Orb with Love > [6:52]
06. Good-Bye, Mrs. Uranus [10:17]
07. Interstellar Overdrop [9:25]
08. Cometary Orbital Drive [13:45]

Notes: For CD-R burning (...if anyone still does that?), tracks 0-3 fit on disc 1, 4-7 on disc 2.

MINI BIO:
"Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso U.F.O. (and subsequent offshoots) is a Japanese psychedelic band founded in 1995 by members of the Acid Mothers Temple soul-collective. The band is led by guitarist Kawabata Makoto and early in their career featured many musicians but by 2004 the line-up had coalesced with 4 core members and frequent vocal guests.

The band have a reputation for phenomenal live shows, and releasing frequent albums on a number of international record labels, as well as the Acid Mothers Temple family record label which was established in 1998 to document the activities of the whole collective."
- Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia which every 14 year old has edited.


BAND PAGE:
http://www.acidmothers.com


SHOW NOTES:
What a strange couple years it's been - an odd fever dream strangely bereft of Acid Mothers concerts - or concerts in general, for that matter. Don't know what to make of it. Boy, it's been a while. Are info.txt's still a thing? I only have the vaguest sense of how to write an info.txt. Are these my fingers? Might they dance for me? Let us prepare a feast of sentence fragments...

Got to Philly a bit late. Took forever to find parking. Show was sold out. Missed all of the local opener and most of ST37. Somehow managed to squeeze my way to the soundboard. I asked if I could patch in, sound engineer motioned that it probably wouldn't be a problem, depending on what cables I had with me. Then he went up on stage to wire up the band before. He was a bit preoccupied trying to get everything up and running. I think he was expecting more direct instruction from the band. I'm not saying that the sound engineer's reactions can be overheard during Blue Velvet Blues. Only that if what is overheard during Blue Velvet Blues was the sound engineer's reaction, it would be in keeping with what I imagine the sound engineer's reaction to be.

There was never really any distinct moment where the soundcheck stopped and the show began, it was more of a gradual three-minute transition between points "soundcheck" and "show". Given the circumstances, I left the soundboard patch an open and unresolved question. I wanted to hang around in case the sound engineer was going to patch me in, but the tradeoff is that I had to settle for a boomy back-of-first-floor recording, rather than secure my usual ZaPenguin Approved Johnny Brenda's Happy Taping Spot.

Acid Mothers made it all worthwhile. The list of bands and venues where I wouldn't feel bummed out driving 150 minutes for 90 minutes of music is a small one. Both "Acid Mothers" and "Johnny Brenda's" are on that list.

Musically, it's tempting to use 2023 as an "era marker" - the way a Deadhead might break the Grateful Dead into four eras defined by their lead keyboardists, or Phish fans break Phish into three eras defined by hiatuses. In this case, obviously 2023 is the first year back after three non-touring years, but even beyond that, I can see 2023 as the culmination of a slow transition that has its roots even before KoShi left the touring band in 2015. Over this vaguely-ten-year period, we see Pink Lady Lemonade go from thirty-minute space-trance centerpiece to ten-minute disco namecheck (and finally dropped entirely). We see Flying Teapot introduced (with one particularly-Gong-naive taper originally identifying it as "From Outer Space"), stick around for more than one tour, and gradually blossom into the absolute limitless-potential beast captured on this recording. KoShi leaves, Tsuyama leaves, Tabata joins and leaves, the band's merch table is no longer a full-size high school cafeteria table coated in a wallpaper of endless CDs, but now a more tame, dare one say "normal", affair with the CDs confined to a small box. While it's hard not to miss the days where a tipsy Tsuyama might break into his world-famous smash-hit single "Baltimore Beer!", it's equally hard not to appreciate the sheer ferocity of Satoshima's drum attack, or Jyonson's cosmically-dainty stage presence; and Kawabata's guitar explorations are just as enticing no matter which side of the Era Line one finds one's self upon.

Anyway. Back to sentence fragments. Flying Teapot is a beast. New song is really good. Last few tours' "new songs" have all been really good. Strange to have a show without Pink Lady. Stranger still that it isn't really a bummer. It's like reaching for your wallet, and not having your wallet, and somehow not being terribly put out. Wish my recording sounded better. Thankful for VST plugins. Used a lot of them here.


REQUESTS & REMINDERS:
Do not sell this recording. Do not buy this recording. Do not sell this recording, then buy it from yourself.


CREDITS:
Jolly Barbarians - Jubilant Bravado

Torrented by the taper: ZaPenguin

email - zappa.penguin(AT)gmail.com
web - http://db.etree.org/zappapenguin (not merely woefully, but positively-dreadfully out of date)

Band page: http://www.acidmothers.com

Images for all shows as well as full size images for this show.

Images for this show: